


Let Go, Move Forward, Go On

by Penneay



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drama, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21599533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penneay/pseuds/Penneay
Summary: Number Seven is ordinary, but nothing about her life has been ordinary. Her siblings fight crime daily. She has never held a cellphone, driven a car, nothing… ordinary. Not really. So when she starts thinking about leaving the Academy, she figures she better figure it out.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	Let Go, Move Forward, Go On

**Author's Note:**

> Vanya Hargreeves decides that she should probably move out of the Academy when she is 16. She gets a job and along the way tries to learn how to be a functional human. 
> 
> Hi! So, I’m going to give this story here a try. I have a rough plotline fleshed out, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to finish it. If you know me as an author, you know I rarely finish what I start. That being said, I have some very exciting plans for this series and especially given my love for this series and my excitement for season 2 of UA, I hope that I can keep the drive to write this one. 
> 
> I don’t have a beta if anyone wants to volunteer to help write/beta this story that would be cool. I’m down to collaborate.

Chapter 1:

The thing is, they all moved out right. Slowly but surely the Hargreeves children left one by one. Which makes sense in a way. Really, Five was missing. Probably dead when Vanya thinks about it. She tried not to think about it. And Ben was… gone. And the once great Umbrella Academy that was never seven, but always six quickly became six. Then through the circumstances, five.

So when she thinks about it really makes sense? After that. I mean what was really keeping them together?

By the time they were 16 the so-called family—team—academy was only a fraction of the original force.

Luther was still as straight-laced as he was before things went to shit. Harsher on his sibling perhaps, but what more could they expect really. Number one was the leader. The one. Second only to Reginald.

Diego was just as fiery as ever. Still itching for a fight with Luther and ten seconds from biting everyone’s head off. He spent hours continuing to train his aim. He’d begun to take these big tomes back to his room.

Allison kept disappearing as well. She would do up her hair and pull out her street clothes out of whatever hiding place she had in her room. She seemed to have more pocket money and was forever reading something on a clipboard.

Every day Klaus stayed out a little later. His behavior when he came home a little more erratic. His cheeks that much thinner. His room didn’t smell as much like weed anymore, but his pupils are still as if not more blown.

And Vanya?

And Vanya continued. Same as normal. Mondays were team training. She stood by Father and took notes on the group’s performance. Then, she had instruction from Mom on Violin. She took her meds. Shower. Sleep. And repeat. Every day. Monday through Thursday, but then it was individual training. And Vanya didn’t have anything to train, now did she?

So, she read? And practiced. And planned. Because really the academy might continue, but she was never really a part of that was she? So. She had to do something when she left… right?

**October 2005**

Vanya had a plan. She wanted to be able to leave. But to leave she needed to be ready, right? Books were helpful. Sure, the only books that Father provided were from the 1950s and earlier, but it was better than nothing. She made a list based on what she saw when she was allowed outside and from the books.

A job. For sure.

Apartment.

Food.

It seemed easy enough.

On Friday, she woke up. She took her pills. Dressed in her uniform. Brushed her hair. She came down to breakfast. She ate her oatmeal. She sat silently at her seat while the family finished eating. Then she sat even more silently until the radio finished.

Father called for Diego for his individualized training, but everyone else is free to go. She goes back to her room and grabs the change that she had stored in her room.

Since she was sixteen, she was allowed out for short periods of time. She just had to let Pogo know where she was going. She found him in the sitting room reading over the data from The Academy’s last mission.

“Hey Pogo. I was going to step out real quick” Vanya said as she walked into the room.

“And where will you be going Miss Vanya?” Pogo asked looking up from the papers in his lap. His glasses perched precariously on his face and glinting in the amber lamplight.

“I was going to go down to Joe’s on 5th. I just wanted to pick something up.” She explained

He looked back down at his work, dismissing her, “You have 20 minutes.”

She quickly walked out of the room, knowing that if she was even a little bit late that Father would be extremely upset.

She left the house and quickly walked down the sidewalk. It sucked to always have to walk everywhere, especially when she saw kids who looked similar to her age driving around in shiny new cars with their friends. They always look at her funny for walking to places, especially considering the wealth of the neighborhood. Vanya imagines they would stare less if she was actually a real part of the academy. At least then they would be used to seeing her.

Vanya shook away those bitter thoughts and pushed them aside for a different day. She pulled her sweater closer around her against the chilly October wind. She took a tun Jefferson Avenue and headed to the corner of 5th where Joe’s Corner Store was located.

As she walked into the store she looked around carefully. She went to the back and looked at the different pints of ice cream. Last time she had tried the Cherry Garcia ice cream made by Ben and Jerrys, but this time she really wanted to try the Magic Brownies Ice Cream. She doubted it was the same type of magic brownies that Klaus has offered her when she was twelve, but it reminded her of that simpler time. It might be better to get the ice cream another time. Thinking about the chilly wind outside, she instead went to the coffee station. She wasn’t allowed to have coffee since Pogo said it would interfere with her medication. Still, hot chocolate wasn’t forbidden.

She grabbed a cup and carefully followed the directions on the dispenser. She looked up at the clock on the wall. She’d already been gone six minutes. She quickly found the correctly sized lid and shuffled over to the counter. Vanya stared at the cashiers stickered name tag as he rung up her items. She peeked up at him under her bangs as he addressed her.

“That’ll be $6.00”

Vanya breathed out a shaky breath of relief. She had just enough this time.

She passed the change along the counter, which drew a scowl from the cashier. He shoved the bag across the counter back to Vanya.

“Thanks.” She mumbled as she took the bag and walked out of the store.

She looked down at her watch. It’d taken her approximately seven minutes to go to the store and purchase her items. She looked around and saw a bench and a public phone. So she took a seat and took a sip of her hot chocolate. She had around 12 minutes to enjoy her treat, look through the paper, and make it home.

She opened the paper and looked for the jobs section. After a small distraction when she saw a short article about her siblings' latest mission that she had to skim over, she finally found what she was looking for. Most of the listings looked like they were for jobs that she definitely was not qualified for. At most she could play the violin and run tactical scenarios for a team of teenaged superheroes. She wasn’t really sure that that would help with accounting.

Griddy’s had an ad for a waitress, but her siblings snuck out to that place often enough that she was pretty sure that wasn’t a viable option.

Someone was looking for a consistent dog walker, which would be nice? It was paying pretty well, $10 dollar per dog, per day, per hour. Some quick math and she figured she could make at least $30 dollars a day. Vanya’s never met a dog before. She put that in the maybe column in her mind.

Vanya took a sip of her hot chocolate as she continued to pursue the paper. Her eyes drifted down to an add that was written in friendly bubble letters.

Another was a small agency looking for babysitters. They were hiring 15 and up which was a plus, but the idea of being left alone with children. Well, it didn’t exactly make her feel warm and fuzzy. Not that, much did really. They said that you could make ‘$100 in one night!’, which is a bit tempting, considering her situation…

There was a gaudy ad for a café looking for a barista. It wasn’t all clean lines and mermaid scales like the other ad in the paper. This one had a castle theme and cheerfully proclaimed ‘HIRING! Castle Coffee and Café!” It seemed like a nice gig. They were mostly looking for someone to ring up the customers and wipe down the tables. They were paying $9.00 an hour and the benefits were tea. Which okay, sure.

Looking at her watch Vanya saw that she had about 5 minutes left for this little excursion.

She ripped out the ads she was interested in and stuffed the scraps of paper under the sleeve of her sweater. Pockets on the uniform would be nice, but unfortunately not her reality. She chugged the last of her hot chocolate and tossed it into the nearby trash can.

She began her trek back to the Academy in her customary silence. The sounds of her soft footfalls her only company.

So, babysitter, dog walker, or café. Which one would be the best fit. She couldn’t deny that the idea of making $100 dollars a night would be tempting. But what did she really know about children? Some, of course. They need schedules and expectations. Rigorous exercise and tasks to keep them occupied. She thought back to what hazy memories she has of when she was younger. She remembers Father often being frustrated with her and so many different nannies. Vanya figured if father and the nannies couldn’t handle her, maybe babysitting wasn’t the best fit for her.

As she walked up the steps and back into the academy, she mentally crossed the babysitting job of her list. She nodded at Pogo as she walked by the sitting room and headed into her room. She quietly closed her door and sat in the chair that just barely fit in her room shoved between the nightstand and her dresser. She pulled out the book that sat on the ground between her dresser and chair. As she opened it, she simultaneously opened the moleskin notebook that she kept tucked into the book and turned so she slouched in the chair and where the camera in the upper left corner of her room couldn’t see what she was writing on the pages.

She’d figured that she would need around $1000 dollars to move out. That should be enough right?

She thought of the dog walking job and then shook her head. Again, what the heck did she know about dogs? It probably wouldn’t be a good fit.

The Café gig seemed far fetched. She would have to speak with people and she can barely look her siblings in the eye. Then again, it was probably the best fit as far as times. She could go to work early in the morning and be back for breakfast on weekdays. On the weekend she could work a bit later.

Decision made she made a quick note in the notebook and some rough calculations for if she did get the job.

She flipped to the next page of the book and continued reading where she had left off. After all, she had a report due on the book next week. She couldn’t be seen as slacking.

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to focus on Vanya in this story. I started to think about what was Vanya like as a teen? When did she move out? How did she sustain her lifestyle in those first few years? The show implies that when the Hargreeves were children they were incredibly sheltered. It would have been 2005, but they were living their life as if it was the early 1900s. What were they ignorant of? What did they know? How did they make it out of that house? I hope to explore that in this story, so I look forward to that. 
> 
> Please comment, kudo, and such to let me know if you would like to read more.


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